Happy International Syrah Day | 16 Feb 2025

I hope you are well and enjoying some great wine.

In the vineyard, we are about to get into the full swing of harvest, with Chardonnay to be picked this week.  It has been a dry summer, and luckily, we have had enough water to get our grapes to full ripeness, thanks to the irrigation upgrades we completed last year.

Today, however, is a special day in the wine lover’s calendar. It is a celebration of the grape varietal Syrah. We love this style of wine, and our Bellarine Peninsula Syrah is a cooler climate expression of Shiraz, closer to the spicy, earthy and savoury Rhône Valley wines than the big styles of the Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale.

We make our Syrah in an old-world style, being mid-weight with a more restrained alcohol content at 13.7%. Using only aged oak to mature the wine, the vibrant blue and black fruits balance the spice and tannins from our Bests Old Block/Concongella and PT23 Clones.

Our 2023 Syrah was picked on 14 April 2023, destemmed and cold-soaked for two days prior to fermenting on skins in open-top fermenters over two weeks. Matured in aged oak barriques for ten months before racking and bottling in February 2024.

Cheers, John